A ski assembly, for the purposes of this description, will be understood to comprise a ski, the usual binding mounted on the ski and adapted to engage the ski boot of the skier, e.g. via a toe piece or clamp and a heel-engaging member, and any ancillary device which may be required for convenience of safety purposes and which is more or less permanently mounted on the ski, e.g. a ski brake or tether preventing loss of the ski should the same become detached from the ski boot.
The transport of skis generally poses a problem when the skis must be carried any significant distance because the length of a ski makes it unwiedly although a ski assembly is not particularly heavy. The manual transport of skis is commonplace under many circumstances, e.g. travel to the slope, upon leaving a ski trail, return from the slope or trail, during rest periods and the like.
A problem appears to reside in the fact that there is no place to grip a ski effectively which will allow balanced transport in a convenient manner.
This is not to say that devices have not been proposed to facilitate the transportation and carrying of skis.
For example, it is known to provide a device having a handle and a pair of belts which can be locked around a pair of skis placed in bottom-to-bottom contact, thereby enabling the pair of skis to be carried conveniently.
However, the strapping of the skis together is a time consuming process and the use of the device requires that it always be carried by the skier and must be stored on the person when it is not in use. Furthermore, the device is difficult to use because it requires that the skier first determine the location of the center of gravity of the pair of skis.
Furthermore, this device cannot be used for the transport of a single ski and hence cannot be employed when a single ski must be taken to the shop for repair or adjustment of the bindings, for replacement or for other treatment, e.g. waxing or refinishing.
In more general terms it may be said that systems for the transportation of skis generally do not allow for the transport of a single ski although this is of great importance. For example, a child may not be able to carry a pair of skis in one hand and hence conventional ski transporters are unsuitable. Adults frequently desire to carry a single ski for the reasons already mentioned and hence a ski transporter capable of single ski manipulation is thus highly desirable.